With Mother Nature making her presence felt by way of windy conditions over the weekend, the Evanston High School boys’ soccer team opened its 2025 campaign on the road, turning in a 0-2 showing at Green River and Rock Springs.

The Red Devils opened play Friday with an 8-2 loss to Green River, a team that made the jump back to 4A this season, after finishing runner-up in 3A in 2024. The Red Devils followed that Saturday with a 3-0 loss to Rock Springs.

“I don’t feel like we were prepared for what Green River brought us,” said EHS head coach Brian Richins. “They came at us like a freight train, and kind of got us on our heels. To the boys’ credit, we bounced back and scored the two goals that we scored. But I thought our bounce back to Saturday was really good — I thought we came out and played really well. We faced an unbelievable headwind in the first half; we wanted to have the wind at our backs in the second half, but unfortunately, we just didn’t use the wind in the second half. Our effort was low and our energy was low.”

The Red Devils will have almost two weeks to regroup, with their next games scheduled for April 4 at Kelly Walsh and April 5 at Natrona County. Richins said the team will take that extra time off to work on the fundamentals.

“The biggest thing we’ve got to do is find an identity on offense,” he said. “Like, what are we really trying to accomplish on offense. Because I felt like we were able to get some things, but I don’t think we’re all on the same page about what we’re trying to accomplish going forward. And then we’ve just got to clean up the fundamentals — we’ve got to commit to fundamentals. We cannot have balls jumping up off of our feet on traps or flying in the air on the pass to somebody. It’s got to be on the ground. It’s got to be easy.”

“Defensively, we just have to make sure we’re in good shape — defensive shape and good positional shape — and just be edgy about when we come in as a first defender,” Richins added. “So we’ve got to work on those things. And then just our competitive nature — we’ve got to build a little bit more competitiveness and we want to win. I felt like at moments against Green River and in the second half against Rock Springs, we just didn’t have an edge to us. We were content to be there, instead of trying to take the win.”

Green River 8, Red Devils 2

The Red Devils opened the 2025 season against Green River, losing to the Wolves 8-2. The home team took a 3-0 lead into the break, but Evanston came out in the second half with an eye on getting back into the contest.

“I felt like maybe we were going to get back in that game, Richins said. “Just when we were down 3-0, we scored a goal to make it interesting. And boy, it felt like the momentum was really kind of coming back our way.”

Brooks Searle scored the Red Devils’ first goal of the season in the game’s 46th minute, when Green River made the mistake of playing the ball back to the goalie with Searle right on top of the play. Searle arrived at the ball just before the keeper, and sprinted in untouched for the score to cut the lead to 3-1.

“We were able to find a penetrating ball, put the defense up and then we know Brooks has got speed, as well as a good, calm presence in front of the net,” Richins said. “Those are the kinds of things we want to have happen more often. It was refreshing to see that happen, and the way it happened was perfect — exactly the way we wanted it to be.”

The excitement was short-lived, however, as the Wolves answered with a goal less than a minute after Searle’s tally to make it a 3-goal lead once again at 4-1.

“We immediately made two terrible defensive mistakes,” Richins explained. “Just positioning and reactionary stuff, and they went right past us and right into the net. Green River got themselves back on their feet, so that wasn’t great.”

The Red Devils were still determined to make it a game, with senior captain Jordan Mendez scoring his first goal of the season just a minute later, on a difficult kick from about 30 yards out to make it 4-2.

“Jordan has always got a good leg on the ball, and when he gets to his left foot, he’s pretty deadly,” Richins said. “So we got that one set up to him, and he was able to find the net.”

That would be the last score of the match for Evanston, however, as the Wolves rattled off four unanswered scores to win 8-2. The Red Devils weren’t without opportunities — including a strike by Mendez that went off the top bar — but couldn’t find the back of the net.

“I thought Jordan was going to get a second goal, but it hit off the crossbar,” Richins said. “It was a steep angle he was taking, trying to take that shot, but in the end, it was a dangerous shot and just inches from scoring.”

Coming into the contest, Richins had decided to try a line change — similar to what you’d find in hockey — in an effort to keep fresh legs on the field, switching out all 10 players every 10 minutes. By the second half, he decided that the idea was better in theory than in practice.

“It didn’t go well,” he said. “I don’t think we had full buy-in from everybody. I was worried about that, and then the other part of it was we found some struggles with our pace — I felt like we had two pretty equal groups of guys, but in the end I think I may have made two maybe less than superior teams. So we’ve got some work to do with lateral movement and just engagement on the field, pressuring the ball and then keeping possession of the ball, and that’s part of why we gave up the goals we gave up ... we just didn’t have the pace and the athleticism on the field that we needed.”

Rock Springs 3, Red Devils 0

Squaring off against Rock Springs after Friday’s loss to Green River, the Red Devils put together a solid first half, despite a wicked headwind for the first 40 minutes.

The Tigers scored the first goal of the contest on a penalty kick in the 18th minute; Red Devil keeper Jaeger Liechty and the defense held the home team scoreless from that point on until the second half. Rock Spring added two goals in the second, while turning away Evanston at every opportunity to win 3-0.

“I was actually more worried about Rock Springs than Green River,” Richins said. “And in the end, we played Rock Springs much better than we played Green River. I thought the first half we were playing incredible. I thought we played such good soccer. We possessed the ball really well, even with that headwind coming on us. We had a few opportunities. But the second half, we kind of had a letdown. You have to play with an intensity level that says, ‘We’re going to go grab this thing by the neck and win it.’ And we just didn’t do that.”

Richins credited the play of Jaeger Liechty in net, as well as the midfield trio of Angel Gonzalez, Payton Allred and Victor Lozano with keeping things close.

“I really thought that the combination of Angel, Payton, and Victor in our midfield in the first half made all the difference in the world,” he said. “I felt like they were winning 1v1 I thought they were passing the ball really well. They were incorporating the wings.They were getting the ball through to the forward. I just felt like in the first half, those three guys kind of bossed the field.”

As for Liechty, Richins said the senior captain was poised in the net, making plays all weekend.

“I think Jaeger made some saves that in the past he wouldn’t have,” Richins said. “There was a diving save against Green River that in the last two years that probably goes in. I thought his reaction time was really quick, and his decision-making was really good all weekend long. He was a really solid presence for us the whole weekend.”